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BT and Virgin Media have set aside their fierce rivalry to battle calls for BT to be forced to sell off its network division, Openreach, in a new escalation of the telecoms industry’s civil war over broadband upgrades.

The pair will this week launch their first ever joint advertising campaign to defend Britain’s record on internet infrastructure investment in the face of sustained attacks from Sky, TalkTalk and Vodafone.

The advertisement is due to run in all quality national newspapers. It will claim a combined £15bn of investment in infrastructure over the past five years and highlight that average download speeds are faster in the UK than in Germany, France, Italy and Spain.